The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system is setting out on a years-long overhaul that leaders said will boost collaboration and innovation.

The MnSCU Board of Trustees on Wednesday unanimously adopted recommendations meant to change dramatically how the higher education behemoth does business.

They say the plan, “Charting the Future,” will steer the system away from a status quo marked by lack of coordination and even by competition among schools. Instead, the recommendations call for joint academic planning and a co-operative approach to purchasing.

An earlier draft of the recommendations spurred intense debate and some criticism. The system’s university faculty union condemned the proposal as a push toward “Soviet-style centralization.”

On Wednesday, the union’s leaders said concerns about loss of local control persist — even as MnSCU Chancellor Steven Rosenstone stressed the proposal is about collaboration, not a “Trojan horse for centralization.”

“This is going to be hard; it’s going to take persistence,” Rosenstone said in an interview. “But the alternative is unacceptable.”

Rosenstone said college and university presidents, faculty, student leaders and others will turn the six recommendations into an action plan in the coming year.

Those recommendations include expanding the system’s online offerings and giving students more opportunities to earn credit for previous experience and learning.

A year ago, Rosenstone convened working groups made up of 46 presidents, trustees, faculty, staff and students. His charge: Brainstorm solutions to challenges facing the system — from a decline in state support to a search for a more diverse student body.

MnSCU is the state’s largest higher education system and one of the nation’s largest. Seven universities and 24 community and technical colleges serve more than 400,000 students annually, including almost 60 percent of the state’s undergraduates.

MnSCU released a draft of the recommendations in June. The system then gathered feedback at more than 100 sessions across the state that drew some 5,400 participants. The working groups overhauled the recommendations this fall — mostly a stylistic revision than a rethinking of the underlying ideas.

The report calls for more joint purchasing to leverage discounts — a shift Rosenstone said would save tens of millions of dollars. But the proposal also envisions more joint academic planning.

It says coordinating curriculums across campuses would help the large number of MnSCU students who attend more than one institution. Instead of running half-empty programs on nearby campuses, Rosenstone said, Twin Cities-area colleges and universities should join forces and reduce duplication. Faculty across the state should partner to develop new online coursework.

Although some ideas for how to accomplish this would likely come from the St. Paul-based system office, MnSCU leaders said, most should spring from campuses.

Earl Potter, president of St. Cloud State University and the head of the MnSCU campus leaders’ group, told trustees the changes will make for “a difficult journey.”

A supporter of the plan, he alluded to a need to change how the system allocates funding to its colleges and universities to give them an incentive to play better together.

“My peers are still nervous,” he said. “It’s a leap of faith that we do in fact have the will to do what this document calls on us to do.”

MnSCU officials hoped the new document would address concerns voiced about its earlier version. Some students groups had questioned the little space previously allotted to access and affordability.

The most vocal critic of the report was the Inter Faculty Organization, which represents more than 3,500 university professors. The union expressed concerns that the recommendations would imperil the autonomy of individual institutions, in a way that favors the metro area over outstate Minnesota and job-training programs over academic pursuits.

Union leader Nancy Black said the idea of voluntary collaboration in the report remains vague. She said university faculty support many of the ideas in the document.

But she said the report still seems to endorse a “one-size-fits-all model,” with little acknowledgement of the different missions of universities and community colleges — and just one mention of the liberal arts.

“If these six recommendations are to become a reality, they must begin where the rubber meets the road — local campus communities,” she said.

Monte Bute, a Metropolitan State University professor, said he worries the process going forward will be too “chancellor-centric”: He noted Rosenstone will produce a preliminary implementation plan before bringing in other members of the MnSCU community to flesh it out.

Leaders of several other faculty and staff unions spoke more highly of the process and the final report. Trustees praised the report and urged the system to move forward boldly.

“We all have to work to drive fear out of the system and drive confidence into it,” said Trustee Louise Sundin.

Alexandra Griffin, chairwoman of the Minnesota State University Student Association and a work group participant, said she was pleased to see the new report flesh out the link between the proposals and affordability. The idea of giving students credit for previous experience is appealing at a time when more older students are enrolling.

But, she said, implementation will be key: More collaboration would be a good thing, she said, as long as it ultimately doesn’t limit the roster of programs offered in each of the state’s regions: “It is our hope that implementation won’t look the same on all of our campuses.”

Rosenstone said he would present his implementation plan to trustees in January. He said he expects the process will take three to four years.

“Playing as a team is a culture shift,” he said. “It’s going to take time.”

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